Ecosystem-scale greenhouse gas fluxes from actively extracted peatlands: water table depth drives interannual variability
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Abstract. Peat extraction substantially alters a peatland’s surface-atmosphere exchange of carbon (C). The sites are drained, their vegetation is removed, and then the peat is vacuum harvested for use as a horticultural growing medium. Despite this disturbance covering only a small percentage of Canadian peatlands, the shift from being a net sink to a net source of C during the typical 15–40 plus years of active extraction makes it an important system to study. Ours is the first study in Canada to conduct ecosystem scale measurements of carbon dioxide (CO2) and methane (CH4) exchange using eddy covariance from actively extracted peatlands. In order to understand environmental drivers of seasonal and interannual patterns of CO2, and seasonal patterns of CH4 fluxes, daytime ecosystem scale measurements of CO2 and CH4, along with average hourly water table depth (WTD) and soil temperature, were conducted from March to October in 2020, 2021 and 2022 at a Western Site (near Drayton Valley, Alberta), and from May to October in 2020 and 2022 at an Eastern Site (near Rivière-du-Loup, Quebec). In contrast to the positive linear relationship observed in my studies, we observed a unimodal CO2 – WTD relationship, with fluxes peaking at WTDs of 47 cm. Water table depth drove interannual variability, suggesting that in deeply drained peatlands, we must consider that insufficient surface moisture conditions can reduce soil respiration. Soil temperature had a significant interaction with WTD with positive relationships during moderate and wet periods (WTD < 50 cm) and weakly positive to negative relationships during dry periods (WTD > 50 cm) with lower explanatory power. Thus, process-based models using soil temperature alone may overestimate fluxes from drained peatlands during dry periods. The sites were small sources of CH4 compared to natural boreal bogs, though we were not able to capture freeze-thaw periods. After making assumptions for missing nighttime and wintertime data, we estimated an annual CO2-C of 112 to 174 g C m-2 yr-1, which is considerably lower than Canada’s current Tier 2 emission factor. This research will aid in updating emission factors for peat extraction in Canada, and will help guide industry site management practices.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".